FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MARILYN QUAYLE - PAGE 5

Sam Schulman, publisher of a magazine heralded as a symbol of a more genteel 1990s, might have displayed a 1980s inclination-and gotten plastered New Year's Eve-if he`d known about New Year's Day. A prospective investor phoned him to say it would not, as hoped, invest several million dollars in Wigwag, an 18-month-old magazine. Last week, Wigwag announced it was suspending publication-only six weeks after the New York Times touted it as one of its industry's few bright spots. These are rough days in the magazine world, a vibrant tributary of the River Media.

Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been raising hackles and ruffling feathers all over the Federal City, don't you know, just because of the zeal with which they have been de-imperializing the presidency and revolutionizing the way Things Have Always Been Done around here. They have, for example, reduced the size of the White House staff so much there's hardly anyone left to help Hillary-Rodham bake her chocolate chip cookies. So many letter answerers, doorway dusters, coat holders and sundry other White House minions have been laid off you'd think the Executive Mansion was a branch of General Motors.

Now that the silly nonsense of last week's inaugural carnival is behind us, don`t you think the time has truly come to put some other silly nonsense behind us? I refer to the too, too childish indulgence in Quayle-bashing-i.e.: treating a nice if rather modestly accomplished young man from Indiana and his wife as archfiends, threats to world peace and, worst of all, as uninvited, tres outre gate crashers, simply because he was chosen-admittedly in something of a whim-to become vice president of the United States.

Opinions may vary on the value of handwriting analysis in assessing character or, say, predicting performance in political office. But interested people will be pleased to know that a sample of the handwriting of Vice President J. Danforth Quayle has been analyzed by an authority in the field, and the resulting report can be found in Vol. 1 No. 2 of The Quayle Quarterly. (Among the findings: "He seems to be a control-oriented person whose priority is maintaining the status quo.") The third issue of The Quayle Quarterly features an astrological profile of the vice president.

Marilyn Quayle is about to become an author. In March, Crown Books will publish "Embrace the Serpent," a first novel co-authored by the vice president's wife and her older sister, Nancy T. Northcott of Tullahoma, Tenn., about the downfall of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and what comes after. It's the first book of any kind for both. Spokesman Robert Barnett declined to reveal the amount of the advance paid for the 284-page yarn, but says it took them 13 months to complete and they wrote it entirely by themselves.

Marilyn Quayle will speak Friday morning at a South Holland fundraiser for Robert Herbolsheimer, the GOP candidate in the 11th Congressional District. The vice president's wife, who will be in Illinois for several days to participate in a number of Republican Party activities, is scheduled to speak for about 15 minutes and answer questions at the 7:30 a.m. breakfast for Herbolsheimer at the Fellowship Hall, 16350 S. State St. in the south suburb. Herbolsheimer, 38, a New Lenox resident who works for a Washington, D.C., law firm, is trying to unseat U.S. Rep. George Sangmeister, 61, a two-term incumbent who lives in Mokena.

During the 1988 presidential campaign, tidbits surfaced about the influence of a reclusive and odd Houston preacher, Robert Thieme Jr., upon adherent Marilyn Quayle. Now, he and his teachings have been exposed-as seeming frauds. An impressive premiere of general interest Wigwag features "The Private Ministry of Colonel Thieme (Marilyn Quayle's Theologian)," a stellar effort by Northwestern University historian-journalist Garry Wills, an apt choice to investigate one of our time's more curious evangelical figures.

Some things you probably didn`t know about Marilyn Quayle: She lip reads. She makes gingerbread houses of Architectural Digest caliber. She has just co- authored a novel about Cuba after Castro. She has been known to zip around the vice presidential driveway on in-line roller skates. On her rare days off, she likes to "do something screwy" with her friends. Getting a handle on Marilyn Quayle is not easy. There is the sense of a slowly rotating kaleidoscope, with multiple character prisms shifting slowly in and out of focus, offering a glimpse of steely politican here, traditional mom there, and, not far away, a bit of the madcap and a lot of the unexpected.

The last thing-the last thing-Danny Quayle was thinking about in 1972 was marriage. He was working for the governor of Indiana by day, attending law school at night. He spent his free time palling around with his law school buddies and playing golf. He wasn`t just neutral about marriage, he was dead set against it. "My son was very determined and outspoken that he wasn`t about to get married until he knew where he was going and what he was going to do," says his mother, Corinne Quayle.

Just when we are about to be forced to pay our third installment of our hard-earned money to the IRS, we read that Marilyn Quayle has been given $200,000 to "restyle" the third floor of their residence for their three children. The House Appropriations Committee approved $578,000 for the "care, maintenance and operation" of the Vice President's residence-more than twice last year's figure, and $200,000 more than requested by the White House.